To celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, and to do a bit of research for this magazine article, I watched every single Thanksgiving-themed Friends episode — one episode a day — over dinner with my girlfriend, Stella. What makes this ranking different from the millions of rankings out there is that I am a huge fan of Friends, while Stella hasn’t seen a single episode. So the average of our scores will hopefully provide a fresh perspective.
Fall is marked by the most specific and iconic symbols of any season: pumpkins and pumpkin-inspired foods, changing leaves, Halloween costumes, turkey legs and, of course, horror movies.
Every season has its associated food, clothes and activities. Pumpkin spice lattes, flannels and apple picking all bring fall to mind. Yet, my most fall-esque associations will always be Bon Iver, Noah Kahan’s Stick Season and Taylor Swift’s Evermore. Hopefully, this music will bring you the same autumnal joy it brings me.
When I think of Taylor Swift’s album Red, a few things come to mind. Structurally, I think of how the album demonstrated Swift’s potential to segue from country to pop, offering hits like “I Knew You Were Trouble” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Beyond this, though, I think of the personal memories I have associated with Red.
Gilmore Girls was never a hit during its original run. It didn’t win awards or gain a large following, but the show’s Netflix-sponsored revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, and the wave of millennial nostalgia in the past two decades sparked the show’s current fame. Its enduring cultural impact is a hallmark of Gilmore Girls itself; there’s a hard-to-place something about the show that makes it appeal to its large fanbase today.
Before the season of nostalgic Christmas movies and cheesy Hallmark Channel love stories comes television with its own unique aesthetic — movies and TV show episodes that simply match September-November energy. The fall season has lots of nostalgic, light-hearted choices to pick from, so here is a list of my top movies and TV shows to watch as the weather starts to cool down. This list purposely excludes horror movies, as they are a category of their own.